Hamlet
nounA small human settlement, smaller than a village and often without a church.
How to spell hamlet
6 letters · 2 syllables
How to pronounce hamlet
Say the part in capitals loudest.
What does hamlet mean?
- nounA small human settlement, smaller than a village and often without a church.
Hamlet in a sentence
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The remote hamlet had just twelve houses and a single narrow lane.
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They retired to a quiet hamlet in the hills, far from any town.
Where does hamlet come from?
Language of origin: French
This word arrived in English from Old French in the medieval period, as hamelet, a double diminutive built on hamel, itself a small form of ham, meaning a village or homestead. That older root is closely tied to the Germanic word for 'home', the same family that gives English 'home' and the place-name ending '-ham' seen in towns like Birmingham and Nottingham. Literally, then, a hamlet is a 'little little home-place', a settlement smaller than a village, traditionally one without its own church. The spelling preserves the French diminutive '-let', the same ending found in 'booklet' and 'piglet', which is the part worth fixing in memory. Note that the small-settlement noun is unrelated in meaning to Shakespeare's tragic prince, though by coincidence the names share their spelling.
How the word is built
- ham (Old English/Germanic: home, enclosure, settlement)
- -let (diminutive suffix: little)
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